A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

by Gil Courtemanche

  “My son, today we have closed the circle of history and absurdity. The head of the interahamwes, who have sworn to cut the throats of all the Tutsis and send them all the way to Egypt by the Kagera River, is a Tutsi. He’s an uncle of Gentille’s. The number two of the RPF, the Tutsi army that’s preparing vengeance from Uganda, is a Hutu, and he’s also an uncle of Gentille’s. Both of them—they don’t know this, but either one will do it—both want to kill Gentille, who doesn’t belong to either side. Gentille is like the fruit of the red earth of this hill, a mysterious mix of all the seeds and all the toil of this country. Son, you’re going to marry a country they want to kill, one that could be simply Rwandan if it had the chance, the country of a thousand hills, which all of us, nameless and heedless of origin, have built like patient, obstinate fools. Son, we must flee the madness that invents peoples and tribes. It respects neither the country’s sons nor its daughters. It creates demons and spells, lies that become truth and rumours that are claimed as historical fact. But if you are crazy enough to embrace this hill, its consuming madness and its most beautiful daughter, I shall love you more than my own sons.”

  “Monsieur, I ask you for the hand of your daughter Gentille and the hospitality of this hill, because here is where I want to live.”

  Jean-Damascène knelt, scratched at the earth with his long fingers, and placed in Valcourt’s hands a few pebbles, a little rich red soil, some blades of grass and a leafy twig fallen from the fig tree.

  “I give you my daughter and Kawa’s hill.”

  When her father had gone back into the house, Gentille came and joined Valcourt.

  With the lightest touch of her lips, she kissed his forehead, his nose, placed barely a breath on his lips, then with featherlight finger traced all the roads on his lined face. “Teach me desire,” she had said to him one night. He had replied that he didn’t know how, but together they would learn the secret. All she had known before about the pleasure of sex was the furious fumbling of hands and a penis taking what they wanted. Now with her own body, which she was discovering through Valcourt’s caresses, with her own body that she was finding as beautiful as the pleasure he was bringing her, she was beginning to discover the body of the man. Patiently, she explored the territory, with only the man’s breathing and the contraction of his muscles to guide her. She resisted the urgency to be caressed herself, the too-pressing desire to be entered. She had learned to calm the man as he prepared to die with ecstasy so that he, and she too, came to be a parcel of flesh so sensitive that each new caress became an unbearable torture that only mutual suicide could release. And each time they died together, like tonight on Kawa’s grave, they told each other, without saying so, that this was their last death.

  Neither the first rooster, nor the first dog, nor the sun, nor Jean-Damascène, who left a big pot of coffee, a little bread, some tomatoes and hard-cooked eggs beside their naked bodies, wakened them. When she opened her eyes, Gentille saw her father watching them from a distance, sitting by the house. She covered herself modestly but was surprised to feel no shame or embarrassment. She waved happily, inviting him to come. With a little smile he shook his head. He would have liked to come to them walking with his wife, Jeanne, but when he learned he had AIDS he had sent her to live with her parents. “You have the right to live,” he had told her. She too would have rejoiced to see these birds take flight.

  “Come, Papa, come and eat.”

  He joined them, his heart light finally. There was only one cup for the coffee and they passed it around, laughing at nothing. Gentille and Valcourt would be married in three days, on April the ninth. Then they would come back to the hill and live with Jean-Damascène.

  “But I’ll be dead soon, ma fille.”

  No, there were medicines that could be got in Europe. Valcourt would surely find work at the university or with one of the humanitarian organizations swarming in the area. Yes, they told each other, wanting to believe it, we can still dream, who says we can’t?

  But Valcourt would also work with his father-in-law, who with help from Sister Franca had founded the first association of HIV patients in Rwanda. There were only a dozen members but they had great plans, the first of which was to break the customary silence and combat the shame. To the Western reader, all this seems very simple and ordinary. To a lower-middle-class Rwandan, it is a major achievement. But Jean-Damascène was not a man to varnish a situation to protect his own fortunes. As much as his great-grandfather Kawa had built his lineage on untruth and deceit, Jean-Damascène had raised his own children in truth and honesty, even at the cost of darkening the dreams of those he loved. This hill, so peaceful in appearance, was a minefield. He explained this to Valcourt, for Gentille had known it since childhood. His hill, like all the others, could have no peace unless the mines exploded, unmasking in the horror of twisted flesh and shattered families the madness of those who had planted them. But everything would have to explode before the blind and the deaf would finally see and hear the fire and screams rising from the hell they had created.

  The three stayed sitting under the fig tree. Relatives and friends arrived, some bringing flowers, others beer. They would stay a few minutes after bowing almost formally to Valcourt, whose hand they would shake gingerly, then they would go back to their plot of land or behind their rugo hedge to watch time go by. While their old-fashioned courtesy and reserve delighted Valcourt, Gentille was disappointed, for against all expectations she had hoped that her happiness would be noted and celebrated by some outbursts of joy or transgressions of the cold hill etiquette. She tried to encourage conversation, would recount an anecdote about a neighbour who would just bow his head shyly; she tried a few jokes, which met with nothing more than polite smiles. Valcourt whispered in her ear that he much preferred the silence of the hill to the hotel’s noisiness.

  People, he told her, are shaped somehow by their climate and the land they live in. Those who live by the sea are like the currents and tides; they go and come, and discover many shores. Their words and loves are like water that slips between one’s fingers and is never still. Mountain people have fought the mountain to win their place. Once they have conquered it they protect their mountain, and others coming from far below in the valley risk being seen as enemies. Hill people take time before greeting each other. They study one another and only slowly accept one another, but once their guard is lowered or their word is given, they will be as firm as their hill in their commitment.

  Gentille understood at last that Valcourt did not want to stay here only to please her. He felt good here.

  Chapter Eleven

  In Kigali on this sixth of April, 1994, a dozen men met in an office at the barracks of the presidential guard, opposite the United Nations Building on Revolution Boulevard. They had completed the lists and each name had been approved. One thousand five hundred names: politicians of the opposition, both Hutus and Tutsis, moderate businessmen hoping for a sharing of power between the two ethnic groups with democracy as an added bonus, activist priests, members of human rights associations, journalists. The presidential guard, the Zero networks10 and certain soldiers and policemen would eliminate them as soon as the president had been assassinated. Then the police force, section heads and militias would throw up the roadblocks. Colonel Théoneste undertook to hoodwink and neutralize the UN forces. Every Tutsi house in Kigali had been identified. No one must leave the city, or even a section. Each group of interahamwes would be accompanied by a policeman or a soldier.

  “And don’t trust identity papers, use your heads,” snapped Colonel Athanase.11 “If they’re tall, if they’re thin, if they’re pale, they’re Tutsis, cockroaches we must wipe off the face of the earth.”

  Valcourt and Gentille had decided to leave at sundown so as to be in Kigali around ten that night, given the increasing number of military roadblocks. While Jean-Damascène was stirring up the fire, the parade of neighbours and relatives continued. They had all been invited to Kigali for the wedding, but onl
y Gentille’s father had said he might come.

  More and more gifts were accumulating in front of Gentille, who expressed her thanks humbly to each donor while Valcourt hid his surprise at so much generosity. A few chickens, goats, bags of rice, some baskets of tomatoes, a lance—a traditional weapon because Whites like old things—several woven baskets and trays decorated with enigmatic geometrical motifs, and a big earthenware urn.

  Since the visitors seemed to want to stay, the wedding-gift goats had to be killed. When the relatives saw that two goats were cooking over the big fire, and chickens too, they dispatched some young messengers who returned with hands laden with tomatoes, lettuces, onions, eggs and cheese to round out the feast. No one guffawed or spoke loudly, but the voices were no longer murmuring.

  The women formed a big circle around Gentille after shooing the children away from her. Gentille was laughing, bubbling with talk. It took only a look, a laugh, a sigh to set her off again. The men stood in little groups, often in silence, observing the valley and the hill opposite. From time to time one of them would go and ask Jean-Damascène to interpret for him, since none of them spoke anything but Kinyarwanda, and in their language Valcourt could only say yégo, oya and inzoga, meaning “yes,” “no” and “beer.” The man (for it was always a man, this cousin or friend) would bow his head slightly to Valcourt and then wait while Jean-Damascène repeated what had been confided to him. All spoke words of welcome and praised the beauty of the future bride who, said one, would bear beautiful children despite being so thin, but would not be able to work in the fields. And all of them, through Jean-Damascène, told Valcourt to take Gentille to another country. When silence indicated that the translation had ended, each would take a step back and extend a hand to Valcourt while almost turning away, as if the skins of these two hands touching would be performing a culpable indecency. The last of the men—a pure Tutsi the anthropologists would say, slender, bony and gentle all at once, with high cheekbones and shining eyes—did not extend his hand when silence came. He looked Valcourt straight in the eye, spat on the ground and put his foot on the white liquid and crushed it, as if he wanted his saliva to sully the ground.

  “He says he respects you but you must not keep Gentille on rotten land.”

  From the circle of women the laughter and chuckles were becoming louder. The circle had drawn closer and Gentille, while still the centre of attention, was now just an opportunity for countless confidences. There were bursts of laughter but the words that provoked them were whispered. And each woman telling of her pleasure did it with her head bowed. The men drifted imperturbably around the fire, prodding at goat or chicken, scolding a child who went too close to the cli f. The men were not interested in women’s pleasure, which seemed too much like children’s, women being children.

  They had been driving in silence for thirty minutes. Somewhere in the vast shambles of neighbouring Zaïre, the sun had disappeared like a gold piece from the hand of a magician. They had passed the military roadblock on the way out of Butare without a hitch.

  “You laughed a lot.”

  Gentille exploded with laughter as though she were still with her circle of women. Yes, they had laughed a lot because they were talking about men, but more precisely about men in bed.

  “When we were teenagers we would meet in a round house, five or six girls with an older woman, a woman who knew men. We would sit on a mat with our legs stretched out. We would put a hand inside our underpants. The woman told us to rub and caress our privates to make them wet, then open them and find a little thing that would make us tremble when we touched it, like a little tongue hidden between the lips. I know now that that’s called lips and a clitoris. The woman who initiated us talked of ‘the woman’s hiding place.’ Then we would caress ourselves. It was also a kind of game, a contest to see who would have the most pleasure, the longest possible. This afternoon, my friends asked me if our teenage discoveries were helping me today and if the White was getting the benefit. I told them about all your caresses and all mine. Then they exchanged all their secrets and longings, and especially their desires, because they don’t have many secrets.”

  “And why all that little-girl laughter?”

  “Embarrassment, shyness, modesty. They still have teenage dreams and can only talk about their longings and secret thoughts if they’re laughing at them.”

  An unusual number of vehicles were heading toward Butare. During the descent toward Nyabisindu, lightning tore through the night as in a Goya painting. Figures appeared, silhouetted briefly between vehicles that seemed to be turning or backing up without reason. Macabre confusion. On the side of the road a minibus was disgorging its passengers. Keeping his hand on the horn, Valcourt wove a course through the turmoil. A hundred metres farther on, a dozen soldiers were guarding a roadblock lit by a few torches in the hands of militiamen. Kigali-bound minibuses and taxis could continue but without their passengers who were returning to Butare, carrying their suitcases on their heads. Private vehicles had to turn around and go back. The soldier Valcourt showed his papers to couldn’t read. A non-commissioned officer of some kind appeared, revolver in hand, shouting and slobbering. He looked at Valcourt’s press pass for a bare fraction of a second.

  “The Tutsis are attacking Kigali and a government collaborator’s riding round with a cockroach girl.”

  Valcourt handed him Gentille’s identity card. The soldier became even more incensed.

  “False papers, false papers! Whores, just whores seducing even our friends. Go, go, but that one, we’ll get her when you’re not there to protect her.”

  Valcourt turned on the radio. On Radio Rwanda, a commentator was listing the economic achievements of 1993. Radio Mille-Collines, the extremist Hutu station, was playing classical music, which was surprising. Usually it played American pop music to attract the young, and interlarded it with calls to violence and angry speeches about Hutu traitors trucking with the inkotanyis. For months the journalists at Radio Mille-Collines had been naming traitors, enemies, plotters. When one of these was mysteriously murdered, a commentator would say that the victim had asked for his own death, that he had been the scum of the earth and while he, the commentator, did not approve the murder, he understood that Hutus threatened in their very existence might think that only the disappearance of the Tutsis and their allies would guarantee their existence.

  At Ruhango another roadblock barred the way. While Valcourt was showing his and Gentille’s papers, the music, Mozart’s Requiem, was interrupted.

  “The President of the Republic of Rwanda, juvénal Habyarimana, died when his plane exploded above the air base at Kanombé. The plane, which was preparing to land, was hit by a missile fired by Tutsi rebels. The government has declared a curfew and asks all the loyal population of the republic to take up arms to confront the invasion of the cockroaches. Your neighbours could be murderers. Be vigilant.”

  It was half past nine on Thursday the sixth of April, 1994, and Gentille was returning to Kigali to be married the following Sunday. Valcourt had been telling her about Cyprien’s confidences, Colonel Théoneste’s confession to Father Louis and his own fruitless meetings with the United Nations general. Whenever Raphaël had given his great oration on Rwandan Nazism and compared the Tutsis to the jews, and in Gentille’s presence talked about the “final solution,” Valcourt had always tried to tone down the problem. Without conviction, he raised the presence of the United Nations and above all the fact that the international community would not tolerate the elimination of an entire people from the face of the earth. He did believe that there would be horrible massacres. He could imagine tens of thousands of deaths, because this much had already happened. As things were now going it seemed logical, or at least not inexplicable. By the time they passed the roadblock at Gitarama, he had lost his last illusions. In excellent French the sergeant told him:

  “You’re returning to Kigali just in time to see the triumph of the Hutu people.”

  Gentille seemed to
be asleep, curled up in her seat like a little girl exhausted by a long journey. On the uphill climb toward Rundo, Valcourt took a dirt road leading to a small valley from where one could see both Stratton’s hill and the first lights of the outskirts of Kigali. He was reassured by the silence, the scent of eucalyptus, even more by the scent of Gentille, and most of all by her tranquil breathing. All this wove together in a kind of murmur, a barely perceptible pulsation giving his life rhythm and meaning. A few weeks earlier, Václav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, had given a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in which he had invoked “the order of life,” which for an atheist was intended to replace the sacred. What Valcourt was feeling was the enfolding breath of the order of life. In spite of the gathering signs, in spite of the sergeant’s assertions confirming his worst conjectures, he could not lose all hope. No death, no massacre had ever made him lose hope for man. From the napalm in Vietnam, he had come away burned; from the Cambodian holocaust, speechless; from the Ethiopian famine, broken, exhausted, stooped. But in the name of something he had not managed to define, which he himself might well call the order of life, he had to carry on. And carrying on meant looking straight ahead and walking, walking.

  “Gentille, you asleep?”

  “No, I’m thinking about you. I know exactly why I love you. You live like an animal guided by instinct. As if your eyes are closed and your ears are blocked, but there’s a secret compass inside you that always directs you to the small and forgotten, or impossible loves, like ours. You know you can’t do anything, that your being here won’t change a thing, but you keep going anyway. Bernard, there’s still time to turn back to Butare.”